Ofcom’s UK Children’s Media Literacy interim report published today revealed that there has been an increase in children having internet access in their bedrooms – one third of 12-15s (35 per cent) now have access, and one in six 8-11s (16 per cent), up from 20 per cent and nine per cent respectively in 2007. Some 60 per cent of 12-15s and one third of 8-11s (35 per cent) say they use the internet mostly on their own. One in five (21 per cent) of 5-7s say they use the internet without an adult in the room.

Ofcom has published a guide to show parents and carers how to use parental controls and filters to manage their children’s access to digital TV and internet content. The guide also encourages parents and carers to talk to their children about what they do on the internet and how to use it safely : http://www.ofcom.org.uk/advice/guid...

Other key findings

Nearly three quarters (72 per cent) of all parents with a child aged 5-15 are concerned that other people could locate their child through their mobile phone using location based services. Ofcom has today published a guide for parents and carers on how to help keep children safe when using location based services. The guide can be found here : http://www.ofcom.org.uk/files/2009/...

Young people are becoming more aware of privacy settings on social networking sites - 12-15 year olds are now more likely to say that their social networking site can only be seen by friends/family – 69 per cent compared to 59 per cent in 2008.

But one quarter don’t make any checks when visiting new websites - while two thirds of children aged 12-15 (66 per cent) say they make some kind of check when visiting new websites, a sizeable minority (25 per cent) do not tend to make any checks (such as padlocks, how up to date the information is, asking whether other people have visited it, known brand).

A mixed response from parents - nearly half of parents (whose children use the internet at home) say they have internet controls or filtering software in place (45 per cent). Those that don’t have various reasons – 13 per cent say they didn’t know such things were possible ; 41 per cent of parents of 8-11s say it’s because they usually supervise the child online ; and 66 per cent of parents of 12-15s say they trust their child.

29 per cent of children from lower income households either only use the internet at school (14 per cent) or do not use it at all (15 per cent), compared to 7 per cent of children from higher income homes (two per cent only use at school ; five per cent don’t use at all). While take-up has increased in lower income households since 2008, it is still lower than for other socio-economic groups.